The cool air smells of spring. Buds are beginning to appear on the walnut and mulberry trees, but none of the oaks has yet shown signs of leafing out. Any day now I'm sure they will. I'm thinking of that pale green they'll have, so much lighter than the dense green of the sprouting grass.
There won't be many more mornings this season like today's was, with wood smoke flowing from chimneys and hazing the air and scenting it with its acrid harshness. Winter is on the wane. The vernal equinox is little more than a week away. As reminders, three camellias are pressed against my window screen, and dozens more are ready to bloom. I left the windows open all afternoon, and didn't close them until six o'clock. Tonight neither of the feral cats are in the back yard. They must be off exploring, enjoying the mild, bright night. I think I'll go out and enjoy it for a while myself.
Sunday Verse
Probing
by R. S. Thomas
No one would know you had lived,
but for my discovery
of the anonymous undulation
of your grave, like the early swelling
of the belly of a woman
who is with child. And if I entered
it now, I would find your bones
huddled together, but without
flesh, their ruined architecture
a reproach, the skull luminous
but not with thought.
Would it help us to learn
what you were called in your forgotten
language? Are not our jaws
frail for the sustaining of the consonants'
weight? Yet they were balanced
on tongues like ours, echoed
in the ears' passages, in intervals when
the volcano was silent. How
tenderly did the woman handle
them, as she leaned her haired body
to yours? Where are the instruments
of your music, the pipe of hazel, the
bull's horn, the interpreters
of your loneliness on this
ferocious planet?
We are domesticating
it slowly; but at times it rises
against us, so that we see again
the primeval shadows you built
your fire amongst. We are cleverer
than you; our nightmares
are intellectual. But we never awaken
from the compulsiveness of the mind's
stare into the lenses' furious interiors.